Al Assad meets with top Iran aide to Khamenei
TALKS HELD DESPITE THE FIERCE FIGHTING IN CENTRAL AREAS OF ALEPPO
Syrian President Bashar Al Assad held unannounced talks with a top envoy from closest ally Iran yesterday as his troops engaged rebels in fierce fighting in key battleground city Aleppo.
Saeed Jalili, a top aide to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, went straight into his meeting with Al Assad on his arrival from neighbouring Lebanon, a day after Syria’s prime minister abandoned the regime.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran believes in national dialogue between all domestic groups to be the solution, and believes foreign solutions are not helpful,” Iran’s state media quoted him as saying on arrival in Damascus.
“We hope to take an effective step in regards to this new direction.”
In Beirut on Monday, Jalili had issued a veiled warning to countries backing the Syrian rebels.
“Those who believe that, by developing insecurity in the countries of the region by sending arms and exporting terrorism, they are buying security for themselves are wrong,” he told Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour, according to Iran’s official IRNA news agen cy. In commercial capital Aleppo, fierce fighting between troops and rebels rocked several areas of the city centre early on Tuesday, while the army also shelled rebel-held areas in the east, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The fighting killed at least seven people, the Britain-based watchdog said.
Troops fought rebels in the Bab Antakya, Aziziyeh, Bab Janin and Sabaa Bahrat areas of central Aleppo and near the Palace of Justice in the west, it said.
Fighting also broke out for the first time in the Ashrafiyeh district in the northwest, Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. “Clashes broke out there after rebels attacked a military post,” he said.
Aleppo has been bracing for a threatened ground offensive by the army against the rebels, who say they control around half of the city.
A senior security official said on Sunday the army had completed the build-up of some 20,000 troops in readiness for a decisive showdown in the battle under way since July 20.
The head of the UN observer mission in Syria, Lieutenant General Babacar Gaye expressed concern for civilians trapped in the city of some 2.7 million people.